


500 Words: 60. Caustic

by Fire_Sign



Series: 500 Words [3]
Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-17
Updated: 2015-11-17
Packaged: 2018-05-02 02:49:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5231042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fire_Sign/pseuds/Fire_Sign
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Caustic<br/>adj.</p>
<p>    1. capable of burning, corroding, or destroying living tissue.<br/>2. severely critical or sarcastic</p>
<p>--------------------------------</p>
<p>Jack and Phryne have a fight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	500 Words: 60. Caustic

**Author's Note:**

> Another prompt fill that went over the drabble-type length so is being posted separately. It sprung up from a "What would be enough to break Phrack up?" thought for... NaNo related reasons. I needed to get into an angsty mindset and the actual story refused to cooperate.
> 
> With thanks to jasbo for her superhero level lawyering, and to my collaborators in angst.

 

 

> #### Caustic
> 
> /ˈkɔ stɪk/  
>  _adjective_
> 
> 1\. capable of burning, corroding, or destroying living tissue.  
>  2\. severely critical or sarcastic:  
>  a caustic remark.

* * *

 It lasts eleven months. Eleven glorious months of love and laughter and dinners and stepping out and dancing around the boundaries they established for working together and learning, learning all the time how to _be_ in a modern relationship.

It takes them less than eleven minutes to undo.

"Marry me," he murmurs as he ravishes her neck.

He always says that her neck drives him to distraction, begging to be marked; he also refuses the impulse until she buys scarves and insists. And so today of all days he lavishes it with attention; the adrenaline has not worn off yet, their bodies still thrumming with the threat of very near misses.

"Marry me," he says, like it's the only thing that could keep him from drowning.

She is nobody's buoy.

Her body goes stiff and he pulls away, but he's not sorry; she knows that he is never sorry for how he feels about her.

"Nobody needs to know. I'll keep the flat. You can draw up whatever sort of papers you need to keep control of your finances, dispense with your belongings however you like. But marry me."

It's worse than if he had suggested a conventional marriage; she wasn't inclined towards the institution, but she had respect for people who could make it work. She had always thought that Jack Robinson was the sort that _could_ make it work, despite a failed marriage in the past.

"Why?"

She knows why, in her heart of hearts. In the morning she will examine it, replay his words and her interpretations and come to the truth: that a marriage certificate would be real, a tangible manifestation of all the tiny ways they have become entwined over two years as friends and eventual lovers. She feels them sometimes, usually when the quiet of night allows her to hear him breathing; cords and ropes and ties that bind them through choice or circumstance. But that is morning, when logic prevails.

For now, in the dim light of the parlour, all she feels is anger. Anger towards him for asking, and for not asking enough, and towards herself for being so set in her ways that she doesn't allow herself to really consider the question.

"Because I love you," he says. "And because I almost lost you today, with nothing to show for it."

"Lost me?" she says, haunches raising. She feels the hairs at the nape of her neck stand. "Did you forget me at a train station? Drop me from your pocket? Forget to write your name on my lapel?"

"Phryne..."

His tone is warning, but _damn it_ she almost lost him too and she can't face that. She can't. So she retreats, throws little barbs to provoke a reaction, to draw attention away from discussions she is not ready to have.

"What Jack? No longer content to trust me and you need a bill of sale?"

"Don't be ridiculous, Phryne."

He rises from the chaise, begins to pace. If it wasn't so desperate it would be amusing; stoic Jack in perpetual motion as he grasps for self-control, and her so paralyzed by fear that she is unable to move at all.

"Ridiculous? Hysterical, you mean?" Her tone is scathing.

"Bloody foolish," he retorts, stopping to turn on her. His cheek twitches as he clenches his jaw. "So damn certain you can save the world that you don't _think_. So caught up in asserting your independence that nobody gets a word in edgewise."

"Why should they?" she shoots back. "The only person I have to answer to is _me_. The only one I am responsible for is _me_. If you can't accept that--"

"I've **tried** , Phryne! I have. And I won't ask you to change. I'm _not_ asking you to change. But I need... something. Anything." He sighs, the fight leaving him. She's not done yet though, and his concession is more fuel for her fire. "I need this to be real."

"I'm sorry," she says, waving her hands. Overdramatic but effective, she thinks. "Here I thought that the last year of my life was real and it was all just a pleasant little dream on a fluffy pink cloud."

"That doesn't even make sense!"

"Right, and proposing marriage out of nowhere is perfectly logical."

"Calm down, Phryne," he says, and that is _it_. She is beyond her limits with his patronising condescension.

They spend the next few minutes airing every perceived grievance, every waylaid quarrel and unexamined compromise, every tiny thing that had been forgotten in the past two years. It ends with both of them shouting, Phryne clutching her drink so tightly it sloshes over the sides of the glass, and Jack striding towards the door.

For just a second she sees the end of the argument: she could reach out as he passes, lay a conciliatory hand on his arm and make a joke that isn't particularly funny, and he would chuckle. Then he would kiss her tenderly--so tenderly that she might actually cry--and they'd know that no matter what the solution was they would find it in the morning. Together.

But Phryne also sees how to end the fight, quickly and decisively. She grew up with too many arguments not to size up her opponent for exploitable weaknesses; it was always worst with those you knew best, their weaknesses laid closest to the surface.  And God help her, that's the route she takes.

"Don't you _dare_ stomp off to sulk because you didn't get your way!" she yells, stepping in front of him before he can leave the room.

"I am leaving before I say something I regret," he says coldly.

It's worse than the yelling, that tightly controlled fury; she's only seen it a few times in their acquaintance. Never directed at her. Never.

"Too late for that," she throws back.

"Enough!" he barks, and at least it's a reaction. "Move!"

"You're not leaving!" she shouts. "If you want your damned paperwork so much, I'll give it to you now."

She moves towards her writing desk, trusting that Jack won't really leave. She scrawls her caustic words on a piece of personalised stationery, then moves back to where he is standing, rooted. Shoves the paper at him.

"There!"

He opens it, reads her hastily written letter. Then he looks at her, and she physically feels those ties between them snap, so quickly and decisively that she is left breathless. She remembers, as the sound of her own heartbeat pounds in her ears, when he told her about his return after the War. How closed off he had been, to preserve what little shreds of humanity he had clung to; idealism and justice the only things that kept him afloat as he drifted.

She sees that broken man before her.

"Good night, Miss Fisher," he says.

His voice doesn't waver; wavering would imply he could feel some emotion. He is beyond that.

He leaves the parlour without looking back. From her spot she sees him grab his hat and coat, the lining of the latter a tiny glimpse of colour that she focuses on. She can't grasp the bigger picture, the idea that they have so utterly devastated each other that they have been severed, torn asunder and left to weather waves without the other.

The door clicks softly as he leaves, and she collapses into the nearest chair. The clock on the mantel keeps track of the time, and Phryne pays it no mind. Eventually she rouses enough to head towards her bed.

Her letter is on the stairs, perfectly folded.

She picks it up, rereads the words written in haste:

> _I, Phryne Fisher, do hereinafter in perpetuity grant sole ownership of my mind, body, and heart to Jack Robinson to do as he so wishes._

It is scathing in its criticism, wrapped neatly in deliberate misunderstanding. She carries it back to the parlour, retrieves the pen, writes an amendment. Carries the letter upstairs with her, afraid that if she lets it out of her sight it will cease to be true and she will be left with nothing but memories and quickly fading marks she refuses to cover on her neck.

In the morning she will appreciate the irony. For now she just rereads the words she has written.

> _I, Phryne Fisher, do freely confess that care of my mind, body, and heart has been entrusted to Jack Robinson in equal partnership._

 It is a hell of a thing to realise too late.

 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Balm](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5239424) by [deedeeinfj](https://archiveofourown.org/users/deedeeinfj/pseuds/deedeeinfj)




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